


Trapped in an Alleged Work of Art

by hrhrionastar



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: D'Harans are People Too, Egremont's advice, Episode: s01e20 Sanctuary, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 14:45:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU of <i>Sanctuary</i>. Darken Rahl has the Seeker trapped in a painting. He takes General Egremont's advice and brings that painting to his sorcerers so they can—somehow—extract the Book of Counted Shadows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trapped in an Alleged Work of Art

**Author's Note:**

> The artist here is the same OC who drew the sketch of Richard hung in every tavern in the Midlands in _Bounty_ , from my fic [The Artist.](http://hrhrionastar.livejournal.com/77576.html#cutid2)

"You can't keep us here forever," Kahlan said, for what must have been the two hundred and seventy-fifth time.  
  
"You're safe here," said James, beaming from behind his easel. He couldn't paint in this pocket universe unless he wanted to send someone or something back to the real world, but he seemed to find the materials of his craft reassuring.  
  
"There's nothing to eat!" complained Aiden, the son of the librarian who had found the second, hidden copy of the Book of Counted Shadows. It now rested on top of Richard's discarded vest, for all the good that did them. The endless day of the painted landscape was hot. Kahlan longed for stars, sweet night air, and freedom.  
  
James had found a way to transfer anything he painted to a never-changing world, his 'paradise.' First he'd sent Aiden and his mother Livia (the woman James loved) here to be safe, and then the entire library where Livia worked so she could finish her quest for the Book of Counted Shadows. But the library had been full of D'Haran soldiers, also looking for the book. So James had sent Richard in to rescue Livia.  
  
The Seeker had found her and Zedd being menaced by a probably illiterate D'Haran officer, and after rescuing them he'd seen Kahlan suddenly appear out of thin air right beside James's duplicate easel. "Magic keeps people apart," Kahlan had said in James's studio, and James had listened. No magic but his worked inside the painting. Richard and Kahlan could be together.  
  
They were together, of course, but mostly they were together in pleading and remonstrating with James. Kahlan had gone through the same argument so many times now, she thought she could have recited it by heart. Only Aiden's practical interjection was new.  
  
"There's no need to eat here," James answered. "You'll never be hungry again."  
  
"We'll never be anything again," said Livia. "Not hungry, not thirsty…not _anything_. My son will never grow up!"  
  
She sounded teary. Aiden just shrugged.  
  
James rolled his brush between his fingers. He'd stopped beaming finally.  
  
"How can you or the Seeker be a role model for the boy if he can never grow any older?" asked Kahlan, determined to press the point. "Even if we are safe here, how can you condemn the innocent people of the Midlands to Darken Rahl's reign of terror?"  
  
James looked from Livia, who had been surprisingly calm up until now, to Kahlan, and finally to Richard, who glared at him.  
  
Livia had taken Zedd to the obscure books on magic world painting, but although Zedd grasped the magic easily enough, he couldn't paint to save his life. He was in the library now, practicing. If you could call it that. All he could do were circles. Maybe the odd triangle every so often.  
  
James was their only hope of getting out of here. And, while Kahlan might sympathize, or pretend to sympathize, with his plan to trap Livia here in the hope that in time she'd grow used to captivity and learn to love him, Richard could not.  
  
Moreover, every second they'd been in this conveniently magic-free field, Richard and Kahlan had spent alternately soothing and haranguing their captor. Richard was fed up.  
  
Last of all James looked at Aiden, who looked back far too innocently for someone who'd run away for three days to go begging and stealing in the rougher part of the town.  
  
James sighed defeat. "Very well," he said. "I cannot keep the Seeker's goodness from the world." And he picked up his palette.  
  
Richard and Kahlan watched as he painted. They said nothing, they didn't even look at each other, but gradually their feet moved them closer together. Eventually they held hands.  
  
Richard felt a slight tingling. His body started to glow and go transparent. But something was wrong—he could feel the grass under his feet, and surely he should go where the painting was in the real world. They'd left it in James's basement studio. No grass there.  
  
"I don't understand!" wailed James. The glow had faded from Richard's limbs. "You should be gone!"  
  
But he wasn't. Richard was still very much inside the world of the painting, and it didn't look like he was going anywhere.  
  


* * *

  
  
"There," said the sorcerer, with pardonable self-satisfaction. He held his arms spread out toward the heavens, his beard (obligatory to his profession) jutting out proudly. It was reddish brown rather than gray because he was still quite a young sorcerer, but he already had the air of pompous authority that marked him as a powerful wielder of magic. "The warding spell is complete. Nothing gets out unless I allow it."  
  
The artist moved casually a step or two away from him. Darken Rahl, leader of the D'Haran Empire, was standing just feet away, and the words, "as you will it, my lord," could so easily have been added to the sorcerer's last sentence. Deference cost nothing; insolence could cost everything.  
  
"Good," said Lord Rahl. He gathered first the sorcerer and then the artist in with his gaze, which was coldly blue and as sharp as a dagger. "Now find me a way in."  
  


* * *

  
The book about magic world painting really was quite obscure. The sorcerer hypothesized that this was because it required first, someone who wanted the power to physically move objects and people through universes, and second, an artist, by definition someone who wanted to record not actual people and objects but instead his or her own creative impressions.  
  
The artist hmmed, and did not tell him her opinion, mostly because she hadn't read the magic world painting book and so she didn't have an opinion yet.  
  
Fortuitously, as the sorcerer said, Lord Rahl possessed a copy of the book in the attics of the People's Palace. Less fortuitously, the attics of the People's Palace were filled with disorganized stacks of old books (some of which stung, bit, or stabbed unwary readers), as well as other hazardous objects.  
  
Lord Rahl sent in a quad of soldiers first. One of them tripped over a brass lamp and was chased by a man made of mist who offered to satisfy his every desire, much to the amusement of the Mord'Sith in the palace. The leader of the quad brought Lord Rahl a book on spanking, proving to the sorcerer that all soldiers were illiterate and to the artist that ornate lettering was a craft well lost.  
  
The second attic expedition was composed of Mord'Sith. One of them tripped over a mirror and accidentally summoned an elemental demon. Only her ability to repel magic saved her life, and she and the other Mord'Sith fled. The sorcerer confined the demon back in the mirror, but it took him a day and a night to do so, and Lord Rahl's voice got dangerously gentle.  
  
Finally, General Egremont went up. The artist had the magical painting book in her hands within the hour.  
  
She couldn't read it.  
  
Not because she couldn't read Common D'Haran, which was spoken throughout all three territories and which non-D'Harans just called Common, when they could be bothered to refer to it at all. Not because she couldn't decipher the ancient, elegant script.  
  
The artist's problem was that she had never learned to read magic. And the book was all magic.  
  
"Hair of the unicorn, that just means white horse hair," explained the sorcerer. "Unicorns are extinct."  
  
The artist pushed her own long charcoal-colored hair off her shoulders. Normally she was hardly conscious of her physical body—she was all eyes and of course three fingers to guide her paintbrush—but lately she couldn't stop feeling something else, something more. Her hair was heavy and pretty, softer than an extinct unicorn's she was sure. She let her hands drop and watched the sorcerer.  
  
He tore his gaze away from her neck and tapped the parchment in front of them. It gave a detailed recipe for magic paint that included the tears of an eagle's egg.  
  
The artist raised her eyebrows and shifted her chair closer to the sorcerer's. Not far away sat the painting, spread out so the Seeker and Confessor and library and other people were in clear view. An unlit candle in an ornate holder rested on top of the painted easel and its user. The artist did not like to sully her eyes with the sight of her rival.  
  
Past the painting stood a blond Mord'Sith. She was their guard, although the artist had no idea if she were there to guard the artist and the sorcerer—and keep them on task?—or whether she were there to guard the painting, which was unlikely to get up and walk away. Never mind: if it tried anything, the Mord'Sith was ready to frame it and chain it to the wall. Let the Seeker's eyes (as Moira Lira's painted smile so famously had) follow her downstairs to Lord Rahl's bedchamber then!  
  
The artist was no good at anything except her art. This wasn't because she lacked the intelligence but because she lacked the motivation. Nothing else had ever interested her. Most things—most people too—were dull.  
  
But she was not bored now.  
  


* * *

  
  
"You know, James was right," said Richard. "This place _is_ paradise."  
  
He lay propped on one elbow, smiling down into Kahlan's eyes. Not far away was the Book of Counted Shadows, now mostly invisible because Richard's pants had been thrown over it. Kahlan's dress hung more sedately over a bush at the edge of the clearing.  
  
"Mmm," said Kahlan, tracing meaningless designs on Richard's chest because she liked the way his eyes dilated with the touch of her nails. "You don't wish we had a bed?"  
  
"And miss seeing you with leaves in your hair?" Richard teased. "Never."  
  
Kahlan might be willing to forego a bed but she did wish Zedd's insect-repelling spells worked inside the painting. No one traveling with a wizard ever got mosquito bites, and Kahlan had a crystal in her pack spelled to keep bugs away that had been a gift from her very first Aydindril wizard. Alas, it did not work inside the painting.  
  
"When James took this forest from a D'Haran lord's estate," Kahlan complained, reaching under her and stifling an undignified squeal at the sight of a half-crushed beetle oozing drunkenly on her palm, "if only he could have not painted this poor thing."  
  
Richard set the beetle aside, just a little way from the Book of Counted Shadows and his pile of clothes—Sword of Truth lain carelessly across the top—and slid back down beside Kahlan on their bed of leaves.  
  
"Do you know how much I've…I've wished for this?" Richard asked shyly.  
  
"Not more than I have," Kahlan murmured back. She reached up to stroke Richard's cheek, loving the slight roughness of stubble under her fingers. "You know that I love you. I would rather spend an eternity in the fiery pits of the Underworld than bring harm to you."  
  
Richard eased down farther until they were nose to nose, and then he kissed her. Everything in that kiss told Kahlan her feelings were returned. She felt giddy and unreal, as if, when James had painted her into this world, he had painted only the best part of her—the part that deserved Richard's love.  
  
Something rustled in the trees. Kahlan's first thought was that the lord of James's D'Haran estate had kept shadrins in his forest, but words gradually became intelligible: "—are coming! The D'Harans are coming! The D'Harans are—"  
  
Aiden crashed into the clearing a second after Richard had pulled on his pants and Kahlan had gotten her dress over her head. Living on the road had at least honed their reflexes.  
  
Aiden stared as Richard snatched the Sword of Truth from the ground and Kahlan pulled her bodice down, almost too far for decency.  
  
"Stay here!" ordered Richard, already running. Kahlan was close on his heels.  
  
"—coming," finished Aiden, his eyes wide as he addressed the suddenly empty clearing.  
  


* * *

  
  
The artist felt the D'Haran garrison coalesce into being around her. She felt the magic that lived in all things, the abstract structures the sorcerer had taught her to sense. And then she felt that heightened awareness ebb.  
  
She opened her eyes.  
  
Her easel stood in front of her, supporting a copy of the painting in which Lord Rahl's enemies were trapped. The copy had served as a way in, but it would not be a way out: no one but the artist's rival, whose creation this place was, could perform magic here while he lived.  
  
The artist set down her paintbrush and crossed to an arrow slit in the wall. She squinted. A man stood before an easel about a hundred yards away. The artist breathed out, thankful that she'd brought them to the right place. She'd known she had already, but the power the sorcerer had taught her to see still felt so new.  
  
A point of glittering gold soared up through the air and straight into James's chest. He didn't even have time to put down his brush, or raise his palette knife in a vain attempt at parrying the arrow.  
  
No one could work magic inside the painting except for he who had painted it—unless he died here, in which case the whole spell would unravel and everything and everyone would be instantly returned to where they belonged.  
  
The artist was here to stop that from happening. It had always been only a matter of time until the Seeker thought of the possibility, and the threat of his escape, if not through James's help than through James's death, was dire enough to make Lord Rahl quite impatient. A prison that could be unlocked was no prison at all.  
  
The artist slammed both hands against the wall, panicking. She sensed nothing.  
  
James staggered and fell. Livia went to her knees beside him. There was movement from the forest, a tangle of dark hair and the glint of a sword.  
  
The artist saw all of it through a cloud of alien sense memories. She could feel every line, see every brushstroke. She licked her lips and tasted paint.  
  
She staggered back to her easel, at the mercy of a desperate need to complete her mission before the Seeker and Confessor and wizard could fight their way to the heart of the garrison and kill her. Deeper than that fear, however, was the force of her purpose. She had to get paint to canvas. The picture on her easel called out to her.  
  
The artist ripped off the copy of the painting in which she stood, and stared at the other sketch-and-color-wash she'd prepared. It was the warded room where the sorcerer waited, although he wasn't depicted in it. There stood the table, with the original painting of the field and forest and library lying beneath the candlestick carefully set atop the artist's rival. A hint of blood red leather glinted near the door, rich and sensuous in the shadows.  
  
The artist painted quickly, and as soon as she'd begun she felt her thoughts surfacing again—she was no longer dominated by need, though it still guided her fingers.  
  
"What would happen if I painted myself into the painting of the field inside the painting of the warded room?" she asked aloud, imagining the sorcerer was here and could answer. "Recursively, I ought to be in yet another, tinier painted world—"  
  
 _You must take care with the scale multiplication factor_ , said the sorcerer of her thoughts. _Else you may find yourself in a painting smaller than you are._  
  
"—but I suppose I would simply be back here," the artist sighed. That was a fate she meant to avoid. The longer she remained in the painting, the greater the chances that the Seeker would find and kill her, incidentally escaping to the real world again. Once she had painted herself free, the dominating magical and artistic force that maintained the painting would be absent also, and the Seeker would be unable to affect it.  
  
The artist could feel the soldiers pouring out of the garrison to intercept the Seeker and his friends, but she placed no dependence on their doing more than delaying him. The Seeker was infamous in D'Hara: men sent to the front lines of the battle against the Resistance were now mourned as if they were already dead.  
  
The artist painted faster.  
  
She added ornate lettering to the Book of Counted Shadows, because it was very old so it should be ornate. Its cover was black in her rendition, but with three interlocking gray shadows shading to utter darkness. If not how it actually looked, this was how the Book of Counted Shadows _should_ look. The artist nodded to herself, and placed a last dollop of ochre on her painted dress.  
  
She glowed. Her body and her easel flashed gold and then transparent and then gone.  
  


* * *

  
  
Aiden stared at Richard's vest. The old book his mom had spent so much time searching for had gone!  
  
"Seeker?" he shouted. "Seeker!"  
  
Then he thought better of it. The D'Harans were still out there. Better to slip away into the trees and keep quiet. Maybe they'd still forget him.  
  
Maybe they'd leave and Aiden and his mom and James and the Seeker and Confessor and wizard could stay here and be safe.  
  


* * *

  
  
The artist shimmered into being beside the table in the warded room. In her right hand was her paintbrush; in her left was the Book of Counted Shadows. The sorcerer swept her into his arms and she dropped both, unheeded to the floor.  
  
"Thank the spirits—safe—I knew you could do it—my dearest!" the sorcerer said incoherently, between kisses. His fluency with words had entirely deserted him. All he could do was cling to the artist and hope she knew the truth of his heart without words.  
  
The artist let herself be pressed against the table and managed to scoot up onto it, her fingers digging long grooves into the sorcerer's velvet robe. She kicked out to free her leg from a tangle of skirt and accidentally hit the easel, which wobbled dangerously. All the time she was kissing the sorcerer back, and her mind was free of scale and balance and perspective and foreground and all the things that went into good art, the kind of art that made Lord Rahl give you your own studio in the People's Palace.  
  
The artist had never felt less bored in her life.  
  
The Mord'Sith by the door had come into the room by now. She picked up the Book of Counted Shadows and dusted it against her arm before rolling her eyes at the artist and the sorcerer and taking several long strides to the hallway. Lord Rahl would want the book at once.  
  
Neither the artist nor the sorcerer so much as heard her go. All the repressed desires of lives spent in service to the higher beauty of art and magic, all the feeling that had sprung up between them during their search for a solution to the problem of the painted Seeker, poured into this one glorious moment.  
  
The artist knocked over the candlestick with one ecstatic flailing wrist. The painting it had held down floated leisurely to the floor.  
  
Seeker and Confessor smiled out, frozen in space. Trapped in a picture. Together forever.


End file.
